Will Volkswagens Become Baby Porsches?

The Volkswagen Group had quite a decision on its hands: Considering the company owns both Porsche and Audi, which should have the honor of designing future Volkswagen-branded sports cars?

According to The Truth About Cars (which translated from German site Automobilwoche), Porsche is not only the choice to engineer VW sports cars, but just may be in charge of designing the powertrain for all future VWs.

The real coup, however, is in what Porsche plans to provide: a Modular Standard Platform that will place the engine directly over the front axle and fit both longitudinal and transverse engine arrangements. The MSB, as it’s called, will be put into use for the next Porsche Cayenne and Panamera as well as a future Bentley, and its flexibility could quickly see it spread throughout the Volkswagen portfolio of brands. Group CEO Martin Winterkorn called it an advantage that would put VW “years ahead of the competition.”

So Porsche could develop a basic platform for not only Volkswagen, but all of the VW Group’s brands. Is that really an advantage, as Winterkorn says?

All this doesn’t make much sense and reminds me of the path GM went down, which culminated in watered-down brands and overlapping products. Here’s my two cents:

Volkswagen doesn’t need sports cars, because VW Group already has the Audi and Porsche brands. I mean, the Bluesport concept is seriously cool, but with a Porsche platform it’ll still be so expensive it might as well just be a Porsche. Or an Audi.

2 Comments

the q7 has entirely different appeal from the cayenne and touareg. the cayenne is a legitimate sports suv and the touareg is a luxury mid-size suv and the q7 is a full-size luxury suv. different people buy each one of these types of vehicles. it’s not as though they are competing against each other like gm’s vehicles do.